


The Meaning of Red

by SomedayTheSky



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Grantaire, Fluff and Angst, Grantaire is very awkward, In which Grantaire cannot remember Les Miserables' canon but Enjolras can, Love, M/M, POV First Person, Past Lives, Romance, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2019-01-01 01:39:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12145845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomedayTheSky/pseuds/SomedayTheSky
Summary: Ever since he was born, Grantaire has been plagued by deja vu and the feeling of having forgotten something important. Something he desperately, desperately needs. Something he would die for. When he goes to college, he becomes fixated with the color red. Just when Grantaire fears that he cannot bear his incompleteness anymore, he finds Enjolras.He begins to remember.





	The Meaning of Red

 

**Maroon**

 

I tell myself I’m lucky. It’s a mantra of mine- the type of phrase repeated silently, idly, in the dim sweat of sleepless nights. It’s the type of reassurance one gives to their own dark circles in the bathroom mirror, the kind of art that no glob of bloody amaranth paint that smears under my nails and through my hair and on my jeans could ever express. 

I’m lucky because I want something. I have passion. Many people wish they could experience the heightened emotion, the yearning, the desire that I do. Because unrequited love for an unspecified entity is better than no love at all. I can see how that might be true.

But God, God, I wish it would go away. I wish I could be left alone. I wish I didn’t feel like I was constantly missing the oxygen in my lungs, the earth beneath my feet. I wish I didn’t feel like my brain was a stranger in my body. I wish I didn’t feel like I was forgetting the most important thing to ever happen to me. 

There is a hole inside myself, and all my blood is spilling out.

Maybe that is why I only paint in red.

 

* * *

 

 

**Ruby**

 

It’s strange to see political science majors all the way on this side of campus. They usually stay away from the art buildings unless they’re finding their friends after class.

But to see someone idling underneath the giant willow tree out front, sprawled on the grass reading some shit by Rousseau like he’s actually  _ enjoying  _ it on an unusually pleasant October’s day when most of the art students are busy with their easels and paints- that is strange indeed.

Strange and…

Um, strange and…

And… 

He has… red converse?

I don’t know what it is about those red high-top converse- it’s not like I’ve never seen a pair of sneakers before- but I have to draw them, and I have to draw them  _ right now _ . But he’s too far away from where I stand on the middle of the sidewalk, clutching the straps of my backpack like an idiot while various sleep-deprived undergraduates trudge around me.

I’ve never asked anyone outside of art class or my family if I could draw them or anything they are wearing or anything they own.

The thought of asking this guy anything, of speaking to him, of looking at him- I can’t do it. I don’t want to think about doing it. But I have to. I have to go over there and talk to him the same way I have to draw his shoes, the same way the ocean is blue and the sun is bright.

My pulse hammers through my chest and neck and wrists as I make my way over to him. My stomach churns and churns. I press my gesso-stained nails into my palms so hard they leave four little half-moon imprints. 

It takes him a while before he realizes I’m standing next to him, because I can’t bring myself to say anything first.

He lowers his book. 

And 

He

Smiles

The most beautiful, most elated grin I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face before, ever.

My heart stops beating. My jaw hangs open uselessly. 

He smiles and his blue eyes are limpid and crystal and sky and water and all the clichés. 

He smiles.

He says, “ Ce qui t'a pris si longtemps, mon doux.” He holds out his hand expectantly. “Je t'attendais.”

I nearly place my hand in his and lay next to him. I want to. I  _ really _ want to. It feels right;  _ he _ feels right. Like something slotting into place. A really, really big thing slotting into place. 

But he is a stranger. I don’t know him.

“ Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas?” he asks, his face falling slightly.

“Um,” I stutter, trying to get my heart to stop hammering, the heavens to stop aligning. “Um, I was just- uh, I’m really sorry, man, I don’t know French- uh,” at what I take to be his lack of understanding, I continue slower, “I don’t speak French. Only English.”

He shakes his head, blondish brownish hair flying. I can’t tell what he’s feeling as he snaps his book shut. Disappointment? Confusion? Doubt? Irritation?

“Sorry,” he says, although he doesn’t look it. “We… met… a very long time ago. But I suppose you don’t remember.”

Great, now I feel really awkward. We must have met at a party when I was drunk. We must have hooked up. I must have made him promises I wouldn’t remember the next day. 

But no, that can’t be true. If I met him, if I saw him at all- even in a drunken stupor- I would remember. He has this air about him- like he is timelessly wise and self-assured and ambitious and flame-like.

His eyes drink me in like he is thirsty for my appearance, which I don’t understand. I’m decidedly average looking, and honestly quite a mess now and always, with messy hair hidden under a beanie, with dark jeans all covered in paint. Half the time I roll out of bed and go to class in my pyjamas. I live off of five or six hours of sleep a night and sheer force of will. (And also microwave ramen. Lots of microwave ramen.)

But there are no words for him except beautiful.

He looks me up and down again, then props himself up on his forearms and smiles a little. “Grantaire,” he says. So he really does know me. I could be seeing things, but his eyes get a little glossy. “It’s… really good to see you.”

What could I possibly have done to get him interested in me like this?

“Uh,” I bite my lip, clutching my sketchbook tightly. “I was wondering… so, like, I was watching you- no, that- uh- I’m not creepy, I promise I wasn’t like… you know,  _ watching you _ watching you, just, like, I saw you, uh, sitting there-”

His phone rings. He jumps, seemingly shaken from his odd enrapturement with me. “Crap,” he mutters, glancing at the caller I.D. “Sorry, R, I’ve really got to take this. It’s my parents. They’re furious when I don’t pick up immediately.”

“What did you just call me?” I ask, a tiny, miniscule bit of emptiness filling up, leaving me breathless.

“R,” he says, like it’s plain as day. “You know, because capital R. Grand R. Your name.”

“But R doesn’t sound like  _ air. _ ”

“In French it does,” he says quickly, and runs off to take his call.

_ In French it does. It French it does.  _ I blink a few times. Was he real? Was that real? Am I real? Why do I feel like I’ve found so much of myself in the last five minutes? 

I turn to go, finding his book abandoned by the tree stump. 

I forgot to ask his name. What idiot meets a person like him and doesn’t ask his name? He knew  _ my _ name. I should have asked. It would have been fine. 

Love at first sight tends to be foolish and ill-advised and infatuation and lust and all the other things that go away. Flowers go away. The sun goes away. 

I stop myself. How the hell am I  _ that _ guy? The guy falling for some charming face whose name he didn’t even bother to find out?

I get ahold of myself and ignore the feeling of my blood rushing through my veins. I pick up his abandoned book. I place it carefully in my backpack, making sure not to bend the pages or even the dust jacket, triple checking that all my red art supplies are fully closed.

Just in case, right? I would want it back if I were him. It doesn’t mean anything.

 

* * *

 

 

**Carmine**

 

I’m deep into my world of red paint and red ink and red pencil. Crimson oil pastels, vermillion watercolors, bordeaux markers. All of my class notes in scarlet mechanical pencil graphite, highlighted in cerise. Red on my face, on my useless smock that lets color seep through to my already stained clothes, garnet blobs on my beanie and in my hair.

Red everywhere, but not on his book. God forbid on his book. I take it to every class like I might be tested on Rousseau’s political philosophy in studio art. 

For the record, I would ace that test. I’ve read the book front to back three times. Once when I was on the bus, bored out of my mind. Another time late at night when I couldn’t stop thinking about the person it belonged to. And the last time when I realized I understood very little of the book despite my efforts and wanted to try it again.

But I haven’t seen Enjolras.

Wait. Where did that name come from? It’s almost as obscure and French and difficult to pronounce as mine.

Enjolras.

Enjolras, Enjolras.

Maybe I remember it from the first time we met. No, I’m convinced by now that I could  _ never _ forget meeting him.

“Grantaire,” my teacher snaps, bringing me down to earth. “Focus.”

I sigh deeply and continue signing my name at the bottom of my pieces. I never sign my work until it is about to be hung. I don’t know why. Perhaps because my name feels incomplete. Just like the rest of me. 

“Mister Garcia?” I ask, cautious.

“Yes?” he responds irritably, only half paying attention.

“Could I sign with a nickname?”

“You’re the artist,” he mumbles. It’s his way of telling me that I can do what I want.

I take a brush and dip it in mahogany, and I write the letter R.

 

* * *

 

**Scarlet**

 

There are no sinks in this classroom, which sucks if you’re as messy a painter as I am. I have to carry my palette and drippy brushes all the way down the hallway and up the stairs to the public bathroom to let the faucet drip its awfully pressurized water onto my red.

But the bathroom is closed for maintenance or something, so I have to venture outside of the building and along the huge brick walkway that cuts across the grassy lawn out front, all the way to the sinks in the library.

Of course the one time I am not entirely prepared to see him, he shows up right in front of me. 

_ Right _ in front of me.

He crashes into my paint palette. Red splatters all over his shirt. The sketchbook I was holding in my other hand goes flying.

“Crap,” I say, keeping with the color theory of my art assignments and blushing bright red. “Shit. Fuck. I am so, so sorry, Enjolras.” I didn’t mean to call him by name. It just came out.

He smiles broadly. Ambitiously, even. “You remember my name.”

“I just spilled really bright, stain-y paint all over your clothes.”

“Now we match,” he says, not caring about his ruined outfit even a little bit. 

Goddamnit, he is  _ attractive. _

“Let me help with your things,” he offers, collecting my sketchbook from where it lays open on the floor. He stops to admire the drawings inside before he hands it back to me. “You’re an artist,” he mutters to himself, again looking me up and down, seeming pleased. “You got to be an artist.”

“You’re a politician,” I say back. “Or a lawyer, or a diplomat or something.” It was supposed to be a question. Why did I match his tone of wonder and relief and…  _ sadness _ ? “I- I have your book.” I dig around in my bag for it. 

“Oh, that’s where it went! Did you enjoy it?”

“Not really. It all seemed hopelessly idealistic. Getting lost in useless hypotheticals won’t help anyone govern anything,” I admit, handing it to him, not questioning how he knew I had read it not once but three times cover to cover.

“That is exactly what you’d say,” he comments not unhappily, tucking the book under his arm.

For a second we end up staring at each other again. His face is like a favorite book in another language- something familiar that I can’t understand. I wonder if he is drawn to me the same way I am drawn to him, like someone tied a string to my pinky finger and is yanking me a certain way. 

“The other day,” I start, swallowing my anxieties, “when I found you under the tree, I was going to ask if I could draw your shoes.”

“My shoes?” he looks down at his beat-up converse. “Why?”

“I like red,” I explain, which feels like a very obvious and silly statement to make to someone who you just doused in red paint. “It’s kind of been a theme in my art recently. I rarely use any other colors.”

“Okay,” he shrugs. “I won’t question the artist. Paint my shoes anytime you’d like.”

“Also,” I bite my lip. “Can I have your number?”

He laughs. Not at me, not even  _ to _ me. Just chuckles to himself like there’s some kind of inside joke in this situation that only he is aware of. “Obviously,” he opens his palm for me to deposit my phone into. He types his number in.

 

* * *

 

 

**Vermillion**

 

“Enjolras?” I ask, shoving a french fry into my mouth and trying to get the smooth curve of the soles of his shoes  _ just _ right. 

“Yeah?” he replies, stretching while attempting to keep his feet still.

“Stop moving,” I chide.

“Sorry.”

“Seriously, man.” I erase the line I just perfected.

“I’m sorry, Grantaire,” he repeats, shamefully chewing on a fry or two.

It fills me with the same rushing fulfillment as it always does. “I love that,” I can’t help but say, beginning to redraw his shoes in their new position.

“Love what?”

“My name.”

He laughs. “Narcissistic much?”

“No, no, not like- not  _ just _ my name. I never liked just my name. I like you and my name. The way you say it makes it feel right.”  

“Probably because I don’t butcher the pronunciation like all these Americans.”

“That might be a part of it,” I admit. “We both have weird French names.”

“We do.”

“But I like our weird French names.”

“Because they feel right,” he fills in.

“Yeah. Because they feel right.”

He goes back to eating fries. It’s drawing closer to the end of the month, and the weather is starting to get colder, but Enjolras insisted on eating outside. When I told him I would be cold, he gave me his jacket. 

And he was wearing the paint-stained shirt underneath. At first I thought it was his way of teasing me, of reminding me how damn awkward I am. But I think he genuinely likes my Jackson Pollock red splatters. They look good on him.

“Enjolras?” I ask again, trying to resume the conversation that I meant to have in the first place, before we got off-subject.

“Grantaire?” he responds lazily.

“Do you believe in- okay, I’m going to sound crazy here, but- just, like, hear me out. Do you believe in rebirth or... past lives, maybe?”

“I think superstition is dumb and immature.”

My heart sinks. “Yeah. That’s what I thought you’d say.”

“Superstition is dumb, and past lives aren’t real. Which is why you can’t tell anyone about mine.”

“Your- uh-” I don’t believe that I heard him correctly. “You think you lived as someone else before you became yourself?”

“I know it,” he shrugs, like that’s that and it’s no big deal. “And I think you sort of know it, too.”

“I’ve always felt like I was missing something,” I confess. “After I saw you at the tree that one day, pieces of myself began to fill in. Like R as my nickname, or like Rousseau’s dumb book.”

“Rousseau is not dumb!” he protests, scandalized. 

I roll my eyes. “He died, like, two hundred years ago.”

“So did we!” Enjolras stops. Corrects himself. “So did  _ I _ .”

“What do you remember of your previous life?” I ask, feeling ridiculous and oddly vulnerable and disbelieving. Feeling understood.

“I…” he bites his lip. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“There are things nobody should go through even once. A second time around would be sadism.”

Did  _ he _ go through those things? Or did  _ I _ ? Is he… protecting me? And what could be so awful that he can’t even bring himself to talk about it?

“I’m glad you don’t think I’m crazy,” he says. “I was worried you might.”

“Lots of people believe lots of improbable things. That doesn’t mean they’re crazy,” I say. “Your faith is not crazy. Besides, nobody can really understand how death works until they experience it firsthand.” 

He smiles. “Why the red, Grantaire?”

“I like red,” I say again.

“No,  _ I  _ like red. You like blue and green and purple and gold.”

Nothing gets past him. How can I explain myself? How can I explain exactly what is devouring me from the inside out? “Red is something important,” I say at last. “From when we… first met, I think. Red was an important color to us. Red meant something specific, and I can’t remember what. It’s connected to this aching emptiness inside me.” That’s all I can come up with.

“There we go,” he leans back, careful not to move his feet.

“Why do you know all the answers?” I ask him.

“Because you have all the questions, my dar- uh, my dude.”

 

* * *

 

 

**Cerise**

 

After awhile, I forget that Enjolras speaks French. He talks to me- to everyone- in English.  But when a couple of francophones are lost and in need of direction, of course he helps them out. 

“ Où est la bibliothèque?”  _ Where is the library?  _ they ask him, delighted to at last find another speaker of their language. 

He motions to the large map they’re holding. “Tournez à droite sur une centaine de mètres, puis continuer tout droit.”  _ Turn right in a hundred metres, then continue straight. _

“Merci beaucoup. Nous étions tellement perdu. Dites à votre mari que nous le remercions également.”  _ Thank you very much. We were so lost. Tell your husband that we also thank him. _

I gasp. “Nous ne sommes pas mariés!”  _ We are not married! _

Enjolras bursts out laughing. “Don’t get  _ too _ offended now, husband.”

“Nous devons aller,”  _ We have to go, _ I explain to the confused tourists, and drag Enjolras away.

“You’re speaking French,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Je ne peux pas parler français!”  _ I can’t speak French! _

“Yes, you can!” he insists. “You’re doing it right now, Grantaire.”

“Non!” I exclaim, growing more and more frustrated with the whole thing. He’s crazy. I can only speak English. I’ve never learned a foreign language.

He puts his hands on my shoulders, steadying me. “Grantaire,” he looks into my eyes. “Breathe.”

“Je ne peux pas parler français,” I repeat, hearing myself this time. “Merde. Merde, merde.”  _ Shit. _

There is nothing stranger than hearing unfamiliar words come tumbling out of your mouth, hearing them string together in a way that sounds legitimate, with no hint of struggle or accent.

“Je veux parler à nouveau l'anglais,” I tell him.  _ I want to speak English again. _

“Just concentrate,” he says, squeezing my shoulder blades reassuringly. “I know it’s weird to speak French fluently the first few times, but you’ll get used to it, and then you’ll realize how awesome it is. You can communicate with so many more people. Like confused tourists, for example.”

I shut my eyes tight and try to find some sort of language switch in my brain. I blink and the sun is so bright and Enjolras is staring at me concernedly, and I say hello, weak with relief. 

“What just happened?” I ask, my reality shaken up. What I just did shouldn’t have been possible. And yet…

“You spoke French,” Enjolras shrugs.

“Why do seem to know exactly what’s going on?” I ask him, not for the first time. His hands are still on my shoulders. I let myself lean into him, let my arms fold around his back. I've been dying to do this. “You spoke to me in French when we met. You seemed disappointed I hadn’t learned it at the time."

“I assumed you had gotten there on your own,” he says, playing with a piece of paint stuck in my hair.

I try to remember what he said that day so I can translate it. But at the time, his words had sounded so foreign and unintelligible that I couldn’t have repeated them back to anyone if I had tried. 

He puts his arms around me, and I recognize it. I know it. It’s like dropping a rock into a hole- you can hear it hit bottom and guess how deep the hole is, but that doesn’t mean that you know what the hole looks like from the inside. I feel how deep our relationship is, how much weight it carries, but I don’t know why everything involving him is so sacred.

“Red,” I mumble, touching a paint splatter on his shirt. “You wore red. There were… banners? Flags? Something important was red.”

“Red was something important,” he corrects gently.

“I don’t know what it is,” I sigh, frustrated with myself. It’s so close, it’s so close. I almost have it.

“You almost have it.”

“Blood!” I almost shout. “Blood, blood, blood. It was blood. Blood was red. Le sang des hommes en colère. The blood of angry men, a world about to dawn. La aube.”

He rests his forehead against mine. “See, R? Now you’re getting it.”

 

* * *

 

 

**Cadmium**

 

The next color comes only two weeks later when Enjolras is sitting in my dorm room, letting me draw his face and not his shoes. My revelations tend to come about only when he is around. Not that they’re always coaxed out by him, like the previous ones sort of were. Being near him unclogs my thoughts like a bottle opener pops corks off of cool green glass champagne bottles. 

I’m in the middle of tracing a delicate eyelash. “Black,” I whisper to myself, and then louder, to Enjolras, “ Donne moi le crayon noir.”

He smiles this small, knowing smirk and makes a show of passing me the black pencil from where it sits abandoned in my desk drawer.

I scribble the black all throughout the negative space of the portrait, then over where the darkest values of reds are, then over parts of his face I want to call extra attention to- his eyelashes, the curve of his smile, the wave of his hair. And then I realize every facial feature could be the focal point, because they’re all sort of perfect, and I end up tracing over what I’ve already drawn.

“Did you get it yet?” he asks.

“Shh,” I wave my hand in his general direction. “I’m figuring it out.”

It comes sudden and strong, as they all do, and entirely of its own accord. “The dark of ages past, the night that ends at last.” I slam my fist on the mattress in utter jubilation and then turn to face him. “I know we were French, and had red flags and all this allegory about liberty and justice and shit, so we were totally from the revolution. Am I right, or am I right?”

“You are right indeed,” Enjolras admits.

“So?” I ask, standing up, realizing I have no place to move to besides on top of him, and promptly sitting back down. 

“So?” he echoes, clasping his hands together protectively, like he’s remembering something or another.

“So what happened?” I urge him. “You seem to remember everything. Can’t you tell me?”

He bites his lip. “It hurts, Grantaire.”

Now I’m worried for him, for how genuinely he seemed to feel those words. “What does, Enjolras?” I stand again and he scoots over in the chair to make space for me. I reach for one of his hands.

He pulls away.

“Sorry,” I say, dropping my wrist in my lap, hoping I didn’t cross some kind of line.

“Don’t,” he shakes his head. “Don’t make it harder for me, please.”

“What’s going on? What’s the matter?”

“Our story does not end well.”

“Aw man, do we get guillotined?” I laugh.

“No,” he does not laugh with me.

“Enjolras, I really want to make you feel better, but I can’t help until you tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m going to get something for you. Will you be here for awhile?”

“Yeah,” I nod.

“And if I tell you the truth, and it hurts you like it hurts me, do you promise not to hate my guts?”

“I could never hate your guts,” I assure him.

“Okay,” he nods, standing up and heading out the door without another word.

 

* * *

 

 

**Rose**

 

Enjolras. 

Enjolras with blue heather flowers, who does not kneel and offer them to me but unceremoniously tosses them next to where I sit; Enjolras whose eyes look a little swollen.

“I’m sorry, darling,” he tells me.

That’s the last thing that’s even remotely normal before it all comes rushing into place.

 

* * *

 

 

**Burgundy**

 

Journal,

I keep dreaming confusing, dreadful, wonderful dreams. Grantaire shows up in most of them. He is doubt and trust, sarcasm and creativity, he is the color blue even though he tries to be the color red. 

He will never be red. Red is a leader, a person who would kill for a cause, a flame destined to flicker out. Red is what gets people killed. It leaves traces of its crime, soaks all over those unfortunate enough to be drawn in by its richness, its romance.

I was the brightest shade of red.

I told my family about Grantaire. They say he is my subconscious reflecting its desires. That’s a little impossible, because more than my subconscious desires him. Can you fall in love with someone you’ve only seen in dreams?

There are more friends. There is Joly, and Courfeyrac, and Lesgles and Gavroche and Marius and many more, too many to name. More friends than I have ever had.

Those are the good parts. There are bad parts. 

I wake up in screams.

I am convinced these dreams are real, or were real. Because I could not make up anything so simultaneously lovely and terrible.

-Enjolras

 

Journal,

I can speak French. My dreams are in French. They always were, actually. Something unusual is going on. I think I break the rules of science.

-Enjolras

 

Journal,

I know Grantaire would be dead by now if he was ever alive in the first place. I know it’s no good pining over someone who could never love you back. 

I know that, but it doesn’t stop me. 

We died holding hands. If I am alive, he could be alive as well.

Perhaps I am truly mad. Perhaps I will see a psychologist. 

-Enjolras

 

Journal,

The university website was advertising the fine arts program on the front page. I swear the photo looks like him.

The psychologist said I was perfectly fine, but I don’t really believe her. This journal will chronicle my descent into insanity. It will be a fine scientific document for behavioral analysts of posterity. 

Still, maybe it wouldn’t do me any harm to just… I don’t know… hang around the art building a little more? 

I’m drawn to him by this magnetic current, this affirming, electric pull deep inside. Maybe he feels the same. If he remembers anything at all, he will feel the same.

What if he doesn’t remember?

The idea of being insignificant to this very alive and existent and real human being, after everything we’ve gone through, kind of makes me want to cry.

-Enjolras

 

Journal,

He doesn’t remember. Any of it. Not me, not les amis, and not the barricade. 

God, especially not the barricade.

I wonder if he remembers the heather flowers. “F leur de bruyère pour Grantaire,” I said all those years and years ago. I thought I was so clever because I could sort of rhyme bruyère with Grantaire. 

I gave him some flowers before we all marched off to die, and told him that if we were to make it out alive somehow I would ask him on a date.

The bottom line is that I never stopped loving him, but he forgot who I am- who  _ he _ is, and now I have to teach him.

Maybe I can become someone better for him. Someone kinder.

If I remind him of the flowers, if I hold his hand, then I jog his memory. Then he learns of his own death and the deaths of all who he loved.

Someone kinder. Someone kinder.

-Enjolras

 

* * *

 

**Crimson**

 

Remembering the pain of death may be worse than actual death. In the moment, I was not anticipating to feel the agony for very long. I volunteered myself for him, and it was only a moment of joy and utter fulfillment and then it was capital O Over.

Except it wasn’t. Not really. Because here I am.

“Thank you,” I tackle Enjolras in a hug. He stands there, stiff, not understanding. 

“What do you mean? I just made you experience something really awful.”

“You told the truth. And now I don’t feel like I’m missing or forgetting anything. That was the kindest thing you could have done for me.”

He smiles, still hesitant, and puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Enjolras,” his name feels complete now, whole. I understand exactly who he is, who I am, who we are. What we are.

He is as much a busy college student eating french fries outside and getting paint spilled on him in the library and reading Rousseau under a tree for the fun of it as he is a revolutionary in a tiny café in Paris figuring out how to overthrow the government, his disciples gathered around him. He is a student with a red splattered shirt; he is a student with a blood splattered vest. There is room for all of his sides to coexist. Room for all of  _ my _ sides to coexist.

“You died for me,” he says, so softly I might be imagining it. “Grantaire, I love you so much. I never wanted that.”

“It was as much for me as it was for the revolution as it was for you,” I say. “And I would do it again. In an instant.”

“How about we don’t do that, though?” he proposes. “How about we live for each other instead?”

“Okay,” I pull him closer. “Okay.”

He fiddles with a strand of my hair until the paint flakes off of it. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for so long. This you. The one who knows me.”

“You could have told me everything before.”

“I was worried it would have broken you.”

“I’m okay,” I assure him. “It’s been two hundred years since it happened. I can manage myself.”

“The flowers,” he says.

“Yes?”

“Are you still-? I don’t know, does it bother you that I’m different now? That I’m not off building barricades and overthrowing the patriarchy?”

“The barricades killed us and all of our friends. And we know how well the revolutionaries in France managed the patriarchy once it was overthrown.”

“You’re okay with a relatively low-key political science major who likes your eyes and your drawings and the paint in your hair?”

Our hands fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces, like home, like warmth, like feeling okay. And I don’t know who kissed who first, only that the moment was two hundred years overdue. 

“I love you. End of story.”


End file.
